Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 1940. M. REYNAUD'S FAITH AND FRANKNESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 120, 22 May 1940, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 1940. M. REYNAUD'S FAITH AND FRANKNESS

The military situation in France is not one to despair about. It is still as bad for the Germans as for the Allies, provided that the Allied armies possess averagely the efficiency of the Germans, not the lack of efficiency which led to what the French Premier calls the breaking of the hinge. General Gamelin's under-manning of the line of the Meuse, and the inferior training and officering of the army there, ruined the Allied northern advance pivoting on Sedan, where the breaking of the hinge makes the retirement of the northern Allied armies a difficult] operation. But the fact remains that both belligerents are now in the position of giving hostages to fortune — the Germans because they (or Herr Hitler) have so planned and dared, the Allies because their advance has been converted into a retirement, with fast armoured divisions of Germans on their flanks and even in their rear. But if the enemy armoured divisions are in rear of Allied armies, Allied armies are also in rear of enemy armoured divisions. It is risk for risk; to assume that the Allies have a monopoly of the danger is merely a one-eyed view. "If they are behind our front," said Mr. Churchill at the weekend, "we are behind theirs."' Strategical opportunity is abundantly present if the Allies are as quick as the Germans in grasping it. At first glance, it might seem that the French error of placing at the Sedan hinge (or pivot-point) and along the vulnerable Meuse line forces insufficient in quantity and in quality does not say much for military efficiency; but the error is more than half redeemed by the candour with which M. Reynaud, as Premier of France, has admitted it and by his prompt replacement of General Gamelin. Forfeit, M. Reynaud has already stated, will be exacted for failure where failure is so obvious and apparently so unexcused. To hold a vital point too thinly, after eight months in which to get ready, comes within the French Premier's idea of forfeit, and surely none will blame him. The Staff must have been to blame for the overvaluing of the Meuse River as a natural military obstacle, but the failure to destroy the Meuse bridges seems to belong to another department of culpability, for which M. Reynaud promises punishment. But, after clearing away the official wreckage, the military situation that emerges is not a desperate one. The first necessity, says the French Premier, is clear thinking. Only muddled thinking could regard the war as lost; but a continuance of muddled acting could lose this or any other war. To meet the situation, M. Reynaud removes convicted muddlers. A man of energy, he calls on soldier! of energy. To him and to them the French Senate gives its renewed confidence, and France continues to march with Britain animated by faith in victory. Thrown far forward into Belgium and even into Holland, the British and Belgian armies suffered the disability of a collapse at the French hinge or pivot-point; and the sixty miles wide breach in the line there prejudices the British-Belgian retirement. But the fighting spirit of the French army is not in doubt, and the mistakes of leaders already replaced are retrievable. Given sufficient French counter-action against the Germans, the retirement problem of the British and Belgian commanders, who .received last Wednesday evening the order to retreat, will be rendered less grave. M. Reynaud speaks of "a new type of warfare," and of "surprise" that will require "immediate decisions" by the Allies; and probably no one is better fitted to decide quickly*than Mr. Churchill and M. Reynaud himself. In one respect, there is no element of surprise in the present employment of armoured tank divisions either against or behind the lines; nor in, dive-bombing and the other uses of aircraft; nor in placing air-borne troops, by parachute or otherwise, behind the lines; nor in "infiltration" and "fifth column" and radioseizures. All of these are found in books; some of them are already in history. But there is always a class of military leader who says that "it can't be done"; that parachuting is moonshine; and so on. To the extent that they are dominated by false negations of practicable operations, Supreme Commands and Army Commands may be surprised. ,And this is the surprise that has happened.

In 1914 the Germans started the war with predominance in machineguns. The iSachine-gun was no surprise; the Ftench merely did not think that the Germans would use it in the way they did and in quantity. Poison gas, ta% was no discovery,

but its utilisation on April 22, 1915, was in effect a German surprise. Yet, says M. Reynaud, France hit back; and France will hit back again, and again, and again. If the gas surprise were repeated in this war, once more the Allies would fight back, and once more the history of 1914----18. would be re-enacted. It is in this spirit that the Allied populations must regard the ever-changing scene now before them. Is it stupidity or perversity that causes people to misrepresent the French Premier as saying that only a miracle can save France? What he said was: Two great peoples, two great empires closely united cannot be beaten; they cannot die. France will be worthy of her a^aes. If you told nic that only a miracle can save France, I would say: "I believe in miracles, for I believe in France." His message to the Americas and to the outside world—"far off millions" not yet engaged in the fight for freedom—is that they may understand, and not understand too late. Free peoples have either a common future or no future; and the creaking' of hinges in France is surely a realistic argument for forming not too tardily the wider democratic front.